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Syringes with the Biontech / Pfizer vaccine against the COVID-19 disease are ready at the vaccination center of the CASH hospital in Nanterre, on the outskirts of Paris, on Friday, January 15, 2021. As France tries to find out why its campaign of Vaccination was launched so slowly, the answer lies partly in forests of red tape and the decision to prioritize vulnerable older people in nursing homes. (AP Photo / Michel Euler)
- Pfizer is looking to tailor the effectiveness of its vaccine against the 501Y.V2 variant, which is found in South Africa.
- A Pfizer scientist says the vaccine being developed would protect against the variant.
- The company is trying to cope with the challenges of different variants of the virus.
A top scientist at Pfizer Inc said Thursday that the company is in intensive discussions with regulators to test a booster version of its Covid-19 vaccine specifically targeting a highly contagious variant that is spreading widely in South Africa and elsewhere.
Phil Dormitzer, one of Pfizer’s leading viral vaccine scientists, said in an interview that he believes the current vaccine, developed with Germany’s BioNTech SE, is highly likely to still protect against the first-discovered variant of concern (501Y.V2). time in South Africa.
“We are not doing that mainly because we think that means that we are going to need to change that vaccine,” he said. “It is mainly to learn how to change the tension, both in terms of what we do at the manufacturing level, and especially in terms of clinical results.
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“So if a variant appears for which there is clinical evidence of escape, we are ready to respond very quickly,” Dormitzer added.
Dormitzer, scientific director of viral vaccines at Pfizer Vaccines Research and Development, said the company had already created a DNA template for a vaccine prototype and plans to manufacture a batch of that prototype.
The company proposes to do a phase I clinical trial of a booster injection of that prototype vaccine that would test against a booster of the current vaccine.
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“This will be an immunogenicity study where you look at the immune response. And those studies are much, much smaller than the giant efficacy studies,” said Dormitzer.
“In immunogenicity studies you can look at the immune response of each person in the study. That allows you to have much smaller studies that are easier to do. It’s not as definitive as the efficacy data, sure. But you can collect a lot more. quickly, “he explained.
The US Food and Drug Administration has not yet released a roadmap for how companies should design booster vaccine trials.
A laboratory study published Wednesday suggested that the South African variant of the coronavirus may reduce protective antibodies elicited by the Pfizer / BioNTech vaccine by two-thirds, but it is unclear how much that reduces the effectiveness of the injection against the variant.
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